Rosie O’Donnell Was Sexually Abused by Her Father as a Child

Unveiling the truth! Rosie O’Donnell talked for the first time about a sexual she went through with her father, Edward Joseph O'Donnell, who died in 2015.

In an upcoming book, Ladies Who Punch: The Explosive Inside Story of "The View", the comedian claimed that her late father sexually abused when she was "very young."

According to Variety, the former The View host, 56, told the new book's author Ramin Setoodeh that the abuse began when she was a child.

She then went on to explain that the abuse ended after her mom, Roseann Teresa Murtha, passed away from breast cancer in March 1973, because Edward had to "take care of" five kids.

Rosie said,

It started very young. And then when my mother died, it sort of ended in a weird way, because then he was with these five children to take care of. On the whole, it’s not something I like to talk about. Of course, it changes everyone. Any child who is put in that position, especially by someone in the family, you feel completely powerless and stuck, because the person you would tell is the person doing it.

The sexual abuse news comes five months after multiple sources confirmed that The Rosie O'Donnell Show star became engaged to her loving girlfriend Elizabeth Rooney, who is a police officer by profession.

The television personality was previously married to ex-wife Kelli Carpenter-O’Donnell, who died of an apparent suicide in September 2017. She was 46.

The former couple shares four children, daughters Vivienne, 16, and Chelsea, 21, and sons Parker, 23, and Blake, 19, together.